


The Exiles

by minnabird



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Selkies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-02
Updated: 2012-01-02
Packaged: 2017-11-09 12:05:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/455259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minnabird/pseuds/minnabird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Many people have called the Holmes brothers inhuman. They simply never realized how close to the truth they were.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Exiles

“It’s been five years, Sherlock.” Mycroft folded his hands over the end of his umbrella. “I think it’s time you tried to engage with the humans, instead of holding yourself apart.”

Sherlock simply glared, unmoved and unmoving. Mycroft’s eyes searched his face, and then he sighed.

“It can be surprisingly rewarding at times,” Mycroft said. Sherlock couldn’t stand that kind older-brother look, not on Mycroft, who had never spoken an affectionate word to him in all their time growing up. That had been their arrangement; it had worked. And then disaster had come, and Mycroft had exiled himself in the most excruciating way possible, just so his younger brother wouldn’t be alone.

“You should go back,” Sherlock said, and it was Mycroft’s turn to glare and Sherlock’s to sigh.

They were at a stalemate: both stuck in limbo, neither fully committed to their new lives, one unable and one unwilling to return to their old ones.

*

Old tales told of a people who lived under the sea, and of a family cursed so that they must wear the forms of seals, only shedding their skin for a single night each year. Some on the land held that the curse was the result of a stepmother’s envy, or some other such nonsense.

The truth was, it was the result of an ages-old feud between two nations of sea people, begun in the early days of the world. The how and why are not important, and the reasons remembered by the parties involved vary wildly and are more invention than fact. The results, however, are often devastating, though they rarely involve death, for the sea people are a resilient and long-lived race and a curse well-laid can last a very long time indeed.

Mycroft and Sherlock were not so very old by the standards of their people when their father ascended the throne, knowing he drew the wrath of their enemies down on his and his family’s heads. Mycroft they wrapped tight in protection, expecting the heir to be targeted.

Instead, their enemies set their sights on the unimportant but no less treasured second son.

Now, sea people are very like humans, as is evident from the occurrence of occasional marriages between exiled sea people and humans. They can walk and speak and breathe on land like humans, but they hate it.

Every sea person has a strong and instinctual pull to the sea, a deep kind of love that can’t ever fade or be ignored. It might even be termed an addiction, for the first throes of homesickness are nearly as painful as withdrawal from a drug. To be separated from the sea is the worst kind of curse.

When the curse came on Sherlock, he thought he was going to die. He felt as if he’d been cocooned in jellyfish, stinging every inch of his flesh, the pain penetrating to the bone. He had swum for miles, as if he hoped to escape it by fleeing. Eventually, blinded by the pain, he discovered relief completely by accident.

Mycroft found him on the shore some hours later, slowly dipping his fingers in the water one by one and wincing. They sat in silence for a bit, until Sherlock finally said, “I can’t go back. It hurts me, the water. I’ll have to perform experiments to see if it extends to freshwater, possibly the water from other oceans if I can find a way, but this water,  _our_  water…I can never go back.”

There hadn’t been some grand pronouncement; Mycroft hadn’t said a thing. He’d simply set off inland, and Sherlock had followed. They had weathered the fits of homesickness together when they set in, and walked and hitchhiked when they abated. Eventually they found themselves in London. The protection magic Mycroft was wrapped in was weaker on land, divorced from the sea, but it was enough to stop people from noticing that something wasn’t right about him; enough to stop people from noticing him at all if he didn’t want them to. His wiles were enough for him to push his way into the government, where he could protect Sherlock.

Within four years of his exile, Mycroft had a hand in everything, and a lot more control than anyone realized, and Sherlock was still wasting away alone in a seedy little flat, solving cases for the Yard to keep boredom and the constant awareness of being out of the sea at bay.

*

The day after the thirty-second variation of their usual argument, Sherlock’s landlord finally evicted him.

Sherlock suspected Mycroft had a hand in it; the chemical experiment he’d been working on was not especially volatile, and a reaction of that strength was entirely out of proportion. That didn’t erase the damage done, however, so Sherlock had got the boot.

He ran into Mrs. Hudson just after, and his suspicions were confirmed. Coincidences like that didn’t happen in his life, not without Mycroft’s interference.

Still, the flat sounded perfect. He was already uncomfortable, with the constant call of the sea in the back of his mind; having comfortable surroundings rather than living in squalor sounded rather agreeable. The problem of the flatmate, however…

Sherlock wasn’t without resources, though; it was easy to get people to do difficult things for him. Molly from Barts was a perfect example: secreting body parts out of the morgue himself would be complicated and onerous. Getting Molly to do it solved that problem neatly. In this case, Sherlock thought, the gregarious Mike Stamford would be the perfect tool.

He’d have a flatmate within the week, he was sure of it.


End file.
